


could you believe yourself?

by afrocurl



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Light Dom/sub, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:05:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1713290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven years makes a vast difference in what he wants from Charles after all these years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	could you believe yourself?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [for this prompt](http://futurepast-kink.dreamwidth.org/2013/07/22/round1.html?thread=27961#cmt27961), wherein there are mismatching expectations after ten years.

After ten years of near unending silence, there are things - wants, desires - that Erik craves. He missed the touch of another person - another lover - just as he missed the sound of leaves rustling or birds chirping. He misses the feeling of being owned - of being protected - by another person. By a person who can understand that not everything is hard or rough just as much as he understands not everyone knows life is soft and warm.

He has missed sex in ways he didn't imagine possible as a boy from his background. What he wants, though, he knows is not the sex he had with Charles years ago. 

It took time when they first met for Erik to realize what he wanted. He had had lovers before - a few short trysts - who were willing to listen to his requests. Who tried their best to get Erik off.

When he met Charles, everything was different.

Then, he wanted bruises, crushing pain, marks to catalog his pain and suffering as he and Charles fucked; he wanted Charles to fuck him hard, fuck him raw, left breathless and satisfied. He had wanted Charles to break him - he only knew how to be broken: though pain and anger - and every time he asked, Charles hedged, made a feeble attempt, and then took him as if he were the most precious belonging to Charles. Charles was slow, tender, soft, when Erik had wanted hard edges and pain. Instead of giving Erik the pain he wanted, Charles only found tenderness.

His many attempts to get what he wanted from Charles always failed, but Erik wouldn't - and couldn't - go back to being alone; some sex was better than no sex after so many long years of denial. He made do with what he had, because what he had was so much better than the nothing from before. It was a simple proposition to him, to take something rather than nothing. He had been doing that for as long as he could remember.

Going without anything, however, for ten years, has brought a change in Erik. Not only has he found his center - found some measure of aborted serenity and unending patience with his affinity for electromagnetic fields - but he has not found that his body has stopped wanting sex. 

Now, though, now he wants slow and languid fucks, gentle kisses and slow sucks against his neck. He wants to be taken care of after years of being alone; he had lived off hatred before he met Charles then and now he has a sense of something else. The Charles he meets is so changed, that all Charles can give is hard, fast, almost devoid of all emotion.

After ten years in prison, all Erik craves are emotions. He wants to feel needed, to feel loved, to feel alive, but all in a way that won't leave him bleeding.

He has bled too much already.

But Charles can't give Erik anything else but pain. It hurts to know that Erik has caused the man who wouldn't leave a welt to his back or a slap to his ass to turn into a man who knows nothing of kindness. Charles knows only self-hatred, loneliness. 

It turns out that in ten years they may have switched roles: Erik the one to know a measure of kindness, Charles the one who can’t find hope.

Fundamentally, Erik knows that he and Charles, even more than before, sit as figures on either side of a coin - one good and one bad - but as he waits for Charles to return to their room for one more round, he knows that he would never want anything else.

Expectations, he has learned, are far too easy to change, and far harder to remember as they were.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Di for the beta. At this point all mistakes are my own.


End file.
